Cross Country Magazine May 2024
English | 118 pages | pdf | 69.21 MB
Free flying drops you into the middleof things very quickly. One day I was wondering how many logs I had for the fire, the next I was landing between the sunbathers on a beach in the Canary Islands.
The contrast could not have been more stark: winter flying breaks, even short ones, are well worth it. It meant when the first day of the season came along back at home I was ready to go, my thermal senses primed and on point. Or so I liked to think, as I strode forwards to the windy launch and got ready to fly.
In the air even the buzzards seemed to be stretching their wings in the climbs, flying little acro demos with wingtip collapses and stalls.
Near the ground, crows soared the treetops like speedwing pilots. It’s never a waste to just “go and look”, flying always sharpens the mind and you’ll always come home with a story. It’s always a joy.
This issue is full of those joys of our sport. Jérôme Maupoint leads the way with his beautiful visual essay on his flying year – the secret spots and favourite sites of this flying photographer are always worth knowing about (p62). Current world number three Baptiste Lambert also has some secrets to share, and does so freely. His explanations of how to fly fast and efficiently through the mountains are easy to follow, but perhaps harder to execute (p54).
Elsewhere, Bastienne Wentzel introduces us to the art of towing in the flats (p30), Théo de Blic unpicks fear (p36), Matt Wilkes has an update from Chrigel Maurer (p38), Rich Dolan fires the imagination with his insight into the new jet paramotor (p46), and Tom Payne and Steve Ham pair up to bring us a funny tale about getting away with it when things go wrong (p74).
Getting it right meanwhile is Felix Wölk, whose photographs of a lesser known part of the Dolomites are just stunning (p80). Julien
Garcia, French team coach and fresh back from finishing seventh at the PWC Superfinal in Brazil, is also back with us. This time he’s talking about the importance of respecting an individual’s personality when flying (p88).
In short, from the joy of the training slope to the mastery of world records, the issue is packed.
Enjoy the magazine!
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